The so-called independence of any our leaders is vastly overrated. A friend of mine who was a big editor at a major newspaper once told me of the incredible pressure they came under on news decisions from high officials, even the White House. You wouldn’t want my job, he said to me. George Orwell was one of the most independent thinkers in modern literature. His essay Killing an Elephant is all about how he went against his considered judgment, and murdered an elephant in Burma, because he was a colonial official facing great pressure from his constituency.
Obama is murdering the elephant too. Last night’s speech was pitched partly toward me– I’m the crowd that thinks Afghanistan is Vietnam–and utterly failed to persuade me. As Chris Matthews said, there was no stirring rationale offered, no clear purpose defined. We’re going to put in 30,000 troops so that we can pull them out. We’re going to fight in Afghanistan to save Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid made a better Pakistani case for an American surge in the New York Review of Books a few weeks back, but he said it was a minimum three-year-engagement. No American will sign up for three years, and I don’t believe any American occupation can work. On CNN last night, Fareed Zakaria said that Obama is merely brokering different pressures: MacChrystal/Realism/Neoconservatism, with an eloquent compromise.
I don’t blame Obama. Again, the so-called independent thinking of any of our leaders is vastly overrated. In War and Peace, Tolstoy says that Napoleon made a huge tragic mistake, invading Russia in 1812, against his own better judgment. But Napoleon had less freedom to act than an individual soldier. Tolstoy’s view of history was that it was an organic force that no individual could contravene, and certainly not an individual in Napoleon’s position. Bloggers have tons more freedom than leaders. The Obama who was against the Iraq war was in the Illinois legislature. Had he been a Senator, he may have voted for the war. An editor friend has always said that to me, defending Hillary’s vote, and I guess he’s right; I heard lately that at the New Yorker magazine before Iraq, all but one of the writers who dealt with Iraq was for the disaster. John Kerry has completely abandoned his youthful lessons, forged in blood, in supporting Iraq and now the Afghanistan morass. Because of his position.
I don’t think that Gore/Lieberman would have been any better. Lieberman stood for the same things that Cheney stood for: fortress Israel neoconservatism. Fortress Israel neoconservatism is a force in our politics and economic and media life that no individual can overturn in an election. Obama will be struggling with it all his presidency. You’ll notice that there was very little hearts-and-minds Cairo talk in his speech of last night. That kind of talk is over. Dennis Ross is in Obama’s administration because he represents the Israel lobby in American political life. And so does Rahm Emanuel in his way. Jewish conservatism is an organic part of the American establishment.
I wonder if Obama, being an intellectual, doesn’t secretly hate his job. He actually seems to like ideas. There were few ideas in last night’s speech, except for the good idea of stanching Islamic radicalism. But by force? That’s neoconservatism. He’s to the right of Andrea Mitchell and Tom Friedman. I wonder if all those death threats make Obama personally more conservative. It would affect me.
What can we do about it? We have a lot of freedom on the blogosphere and we’re changing the political culture. Bit by bit. The left is driving the discussion. Antiwar voices are aired, as they weren’t 7 years ago. Not fast enough for all the brave men and women who are going to be shipped off to Afghanistan. Still we’re doing it. The Jewish identity stuff I’m engaging is a revolution in Jewish life, happening slowly. So is the invasion of the Realists into the power structure. But history’s bigger than any of us. Last night it made Obama look helpless.
I do. He ran on the platform of changing directions. He lied to us.
He did lie to us, but not on Afghanistan. This was what he said he would do, and fools didn’t believe him.
You have a point potsherd, and yeah I do feel like a fool myself for voting for him in spite of that. I don’t think many people who voted for him believed that unmanned drone strikes on Middle Eastern wedding parties and villages would become normal under Obama, even those who did so and supported his stance on Afghanistan.
youre right, chaos. he lied to us. i think he meant it at the time.
and so i look for the next obama as a lever on the new bush
I can’t wait til Obama’s girls are old enough to enlist. And they damn well better.
Oh, you mean like Bush Jr’s two girls? And Chelsea Clinton? How about Shrub himself, flying around a Texas airport in a passe jet in the national guard? Chaney with his six deferments because he said he “had better things to do with his life?”
But what gets me about the whole thing is this: What the hell does Obama think that America’s military (and it’s associated thieves, contractors and medical torturers and chaplains) is gonna do for him (Obama) that they couldn’t do for Bush, who they adored??
It’s been how many years? Don’t you think that if the American military could have done so, they would have won, or at least found an honorable ending by now?
And Obama is stupid enough to believe them when they tell him “Sure, Masa Obama, suh, nows we got rid of that chukle-headed ofay what was C-in-C and got us a genius Afro-American leading us, we is gonna win, sure! It’ll be just like the old days in the ‘hood, organising”
How stupid can Obama be? Oh well, at least this will wreck that ridiculous excuse for a criminal ausylum facility, the “volunteer Army”
See, that’s about where my perspective is. Obama might be book-smart but he isn’t half as clever or politically savvy as he’s made out to be. At the risk of saying something genuinely controversial, if Obama is the new Bush, then David Axelrod is the new Karl Rove. (Lucky Obama, he also gets to play his own Colin Powell).
I think the “volunteer Army” is more like the only alternative to flipping burgers under the yellow arches, with the hope of getting some money for college.
And I think that needs to change because that’s not what military service is supposed to be. Employment opportunities and military service should be entirely different societal issues, but since the Pentagon needs more toy soldiers, they exploit disadvantaged people in the US by setting the situation up this way. And navigating the benefits system of the military service can be just about as nightmarish as navigating health insurance claims — I have friends and acquaintances who can attest to that, and it’s disrespectful of our men and women in uniform that they are treated that way after what they sacrifice for us.
War is THE American business now. It’s nearly the only industry that’s thriving rather than crawling sideways.
The other night on the Maddow show, John Nagl (Center for New American Security –a COIN/Necon shit-tank) remarked that a growth in the military is the easy way to curb further unemployment. He even smiled as he said it.
I thought it was an interesting twist on the ‘fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here’ bumper sticker.
Phil, chaos,
At the risk of being laffed off this board, let me suggest something else. Without boring you with all the details, I met an ex-black-op guy who told me details of his escapades (truly amazing) and told me dates to look up to verify them, and listed publications that referred to parts of them in nondescript parts of the pubs. They checked out. He said the 1981 Dogs of War was about one of his jobs.
He claimed he was in the Oval Office when someone walked in and gave the President his marching orders for the next six months. He wouldn’t tell me who it was, except that the guy lived in NYC. But he swore he witnessed it, and he said it shocked him, and what shocked him the most was the Prez’s deference to this man. What if every Prez gets visit? What if this is for real? What if our elected official, thinking he can change the world and that he has the power to do things, finds out within six months that he’s a fucking puppet to other forces? And what would be the threat? In Obama’s case, who’s kept his johnson in his pants, he has two small children.
You know, before President Bush, I would have laughed briefly, then derided such an anecdote. But back then, I was pretty damn naive.
That still makes Obama a liar, even if out of spinelessness rather than overt malice. Ultimately, even if it’s true, it changes nothing, certainly none of the consequences.
And a traitor to those who elected him. No absolution from this direction.
Over at PEP Central, someone posted a chart showing that a very large number of Democrats aren’t planning to vote at all next time around. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Pretty much. I’ve never considered myself a Democrat, per se, but the whole damn party has lost my vote. I can’t afford to vote for any Democrat, knowing the only way they’re going to be able to stay in the party’s good graces and hang on to campaign finance dollars is to go wherever the lobbyists steer them.
The performance of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress only shows that, ultimately, the Republicans still steer the debate and pull the levers, even when they’re out of power.
It’s a military dictatorship masquerading as a representative democracy. To improvise on the neo-con hymnbook, “Pearl Harbor changed everything.”
It’s actually worse than that, if possible. Look at what we’ve discovered about the true extent of the role of corporate mercenary barons like Erik Prince. Were that we were looking at a military hierarchy pulling the strings — it’s not people with rank stars, but people with billion-dollar corporate assets who are running the show.
MRW – I remember you mentioned this incident before. It puzzled me some then, but I couldn’t help but wonder. Seeing how Obama appears to act almost in direct opposition to the impulses we all thought he used to espouse, what are we to think? had he looked dumb, like Bush, it’d be easy to dismiss. Had he looked mean like Cheney, it’d easy to explain. He is none of those. Obama continues to look and appear as a thoroughly decent sort of a chap, cautiously smart, almost bookishly so, definetly thoughtfull, neither deaf to moral instincts nor bereft of the kind of sense of humor to allow the politics of it all to not get him down.
So there we have it. There’s something truly bizzare in the way he keeps retreating on all fronts, even as he continues to give these great speeches. First it was the Rahm appointment, then geithner, summaers and the economy, then the torture memos, then the Iraq ‘withdrawal”, the healthcare reform, now afganistan, etc etc. Down the list – all consistent. all at seeming odds with his stated intentions and promises as a candidate. Yes, we know candidates change once elected, and Obama himself said change is hard, but even so, surely, he could afford to try just a little real change in just one little area – if only to keep his flanks covered?
I am bothered by the consistency of his retreats and by the way his talents are drafted to the max to keep explaining the needle threading exercises we see. Is it just politics? that’d be strange because some of this does not make sense AS POLITICS. Why antagonize your own base while appearing to pander to an opposition that’s not gonna come around no matter what? Why go on a track that dooms democrats and may well turn him into a one termer? Either the advise he is getting is piss-poor (which is hard to believe with axelrod there et al), or he is unusually isolated (much as we thought bush was , but then did they isolate michelle too? and valerie jerret – his faithful confidant?), or his political instincts were never as good as we thought, or?????
Maybe, just maybe, I think to myself, if it keeps looking like someone is pulling the wool over our eyes, it’s because that’s what’s actually happening. We just can’t bring ourselves to believe it because the implications are so shattering to our sense of security – as individuals, as citizens, as evolved homo sapiens humans, really.
Even the most pragmatic leftists at eg, openleft (like david sirota, chris bower and paul rosenberg – that smarty wonk) are puzzled. and die-hard progressives such as these do hold hope eternal (which is where they sometimes differ from libertarians).
Phil is puzzled to. So he appeals to napoleon and to the mysterious forces of history – a very jewish scapegoat, that. And great solace for those suffering from PIS (Puzzled Iintellectual Syndrome).
But me, I’m just a poor scientist trained to look for clues hidden in plain sight (you can guess which science it is. hint – it’s easy…). Which means an amateur detective. So let’s put our sherlock holmes hats on for a second. Eliminate everything that’s impossible. What’s left then, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, right?. A “man” handing an envelop would be improbable, but consistent with the facts. Problem – what does “the man” represent?
MRW – you brought it up – you do the speculating. It’s only fair. I’m happy to do the eliminating.
Danaa (I’m too dumb to guess the science…tell me!)
Well, I’m an observer type. I notice small things, things that involuntary muscles can’t hide. Tells. It’s in his eyes and the way his head bobs ever so slightly when he walks alone. And the thing I’ve noticed is that Obama has changed in his inner demeanor since May. There’s a weight on him, and I’m perfectly aware the job is weighty, I mean something else. His smile looks great just because he has great teeth and broad lips. But there is no lift in his speech. He can’t speak without those teleprompters; he’s distracted, not in the moment. I remember Bush started riding his bike in the Maryland Hills for two hours a day, and taking vacations around the same time. I caught myself saying to myself out loud last March or April, ‘Omigod, he’s had the visit.’ It was a shock to hear myself say it, because it conjured up those talks I had with the ex-black-op guy so long ago. Maybe that’s when I first wrote about him here. I had those discussions in the early 90s with this guy, but when my questions became too probing, and I was putting two and two together a little faster than he was comfortable dealing with, the steel wall came down, and I was shut out. But somewhere in my gut, I believe he was telling me the truth. He told me that he was awarded a secret Congressional Medal of Honor, which he could never show his family or anyone who knew him, but even offered to let me see it one of the next times we met. Then the wall came down, and that was the end of that. He had signed non-disclosure security agreements that were in effect through the year 3,000 because of what he did, which meant that any diaries, notes, you name it, left to descendants could not be used until after that date.
He said “the man” was involved with Wall Street. As I remember it, this man was well-known in his own field, and not known to be associated with politics. Except it was said this way: I asked which industry was the man was involved with? Was he military? No. A policy wonk (like, CFR)? No. In politics? No. Does he own a huge business? “He’s involved with Wall Street.” Would I know him? “You could, he’s well-known, dont ask me anything more” The other thing he said was that the man was almost vicious with the Prez, dismissive, spoke in a clipped speech, and that the Prez was answering yessir, yessir with his head down. After the man left, the Prez told this guy, who expressed how incredulous he was by the man’s behavior, that every president goes through this, and that no one knows, and if anyone did, he’d be dead. I dont have my notes, which I wrote contemporaneously, but I think I remember him saying that he witnessed this with two different presidents, but I’m really not sure. There’s way more than this, including why he was talking to me, but I’m not comfortable writing it.
And oh, BTW Danaa. These are a series of facts to me that I leave alone, and suspend like a planet circling around me, and have done for almost 20 years. In other words, they exist as a series of facts tucked up in my internal solar system, revolving around, waiting for the day when the informational penny drops that makes logical sense of them. This is by way of saying that I dont make anything more of them than what I am writing here.
But that leaves me free to make out of the etherial tid-bits whatever I can, right? there are patterns and there are those whose fate it is to recognize them – more or less. Then they have to live with the knowledge. Kind of like your black-op friend. I tend to believe you have such a friend because I rtecognize the tell-tale signs of a need to unload information. Humans are just not meant to function as permanent storage units for whatever units. And people find ways to unburden however they can – sometimes to their own detriment.
Anyways, thanks for the details. As I said above – improbable all right, but somehow consistent. If a man were under the gun to act in ways that did not totally sit well with their own convictions, but had the gift of wonk, would they not use that to thread needles so as to extract as much as they could to at least assuage a tiny fraction of their conscience? If there were such a man, he could look and appear as Obama did yesterday, I should think, supporting your own observations. I especially liked your remarks about Bush riding his bike. It’s hard to remember now, But I don’t recall him looking as dumb in 2000 as he did a few years later. Under extreme pressure, some will do dumb. others will do smart. To each their own.
OTOH, there’s little we can do with any of this anyways. As for the science, you’ll have to keep guessing (there’s a reason I’m not telling – not too many like me around, as the case may be).
At about a comparable point in his administration, someone in the Clinton White House (Carville?) said something like “in my next life, I want to come back as the bond market–that’s who really runs things.”
Danaa,
But that leaves me free to make out of the etherial tid-bits whatever I can, right? ABSOLUTELY. I’d love to hear what you come up with. I really screwed up being a smarty-pants, showing off my ‘knowledge’ which Lord Chesterfield said should be kept hidden in your pocket like a watch, and second-guessing this guy, spooking him. If I’d just kept my mouth shut….
It’s like a chinese puzzle that has always fascinated me, imagining what the missing parts would be. Here’s another completely unrelated part of the tale. He told me that there was an interview in Playboy in 1972 (I think), Feb or March (I think), with some character known as ‘Dr. Death’ who did things for the government. There was just one problem: Dr. Death was not supposed to talk, and he talked a lot. My guy told me to check the following issue for the small tombstone that mentioned ‘Dr. Death’ had died on the street right after the interview was published, and I think there was a letter to the editor debunking him as well. (I never did check this story. Couldn’t find the Playboy issue; didn’t look too hard, though. The other stuff he told me was waaay more outrageous.) He said he did the job. I asked him how. He said: simple, ricin on his car door handle, had to get it done quick.
As for patterns in this mystery :-) what do you think the significance of “bond market” could be, as Scott MacConnell mentions here. I have no idea what the bond market controls. I’ll ask Scott.
Scott McConnell,
As I asked Danaa in my last post, do you know what the significance of the bond market is? I hate to sound so dumb, but I have zero clue. I mean, does it control the wealth of the US, like treasury bonds, or something?
And Paul Begala said on some show a little later than that: Pretty cool, stroke of the pen, make law.
Well, I’m not a good person to ask. My rough sense is that it controls the cost of capital, thus determining whether companies (and governments) can live and expand. Kind of like the food supply for organisms that use money. But one person doesn’t control it. (Though the famous 1980′s figure Mike Milken probably controlled a significant portion for a year or so.)
The bond market is the counterbalance of the stock market. Money flows between them, back and forth, as one goes up the other goes down.
Scott,
Well, I’ll keep an eye out for whatever it means, and who can control it here…the top dogs. You piqued my interest. I always like following the grout lines in the dark instead of intuiting the size and shape of the tiles.
As for high finance, I’m the type where if you say “debenture” my eyes glaze over, and I reach for the dictionary. Thx.
Danaa,
Shrink?
No, but shares the first letter. Another hint: it’s not quite what you’d expect, based on posts alone. Except for the analytic part, of course (OK, this was the last hint. don’t mean to torment you, honest. Plus you got all this stuff to learn now about the bond market. Which you’ll regret it).
Danaa, could I be so lucky that you’re a stock (as in stocks and bonds) scientist? :-) Social scientist? But then you implied it’s rare-ish, and about the only rare-ish things I know of in Israel, because I was reading about them a few weeks ago and it surprised me, are earthquakes…so my final guess is Seismologist.
Nah, nah, nah…I’m going to wait until someone comes along who knows all about the bond market and then pick his or her brain. It may now be on my radar, but I am not a glutton for punishment. Besides, I still have the Nuremberg trials to slog through.
The proper call card for shrink is a psychologist/psychiatrist (though the latter are mostly in the pill prescription nowadays; anyways many out there are indeed quite lucky I did not choose to become one, though this is a bit of a hobby of mine, along with a few other odds and ends. Nothing as bad as the bond market though….). So there’s your starting letter….you are getting closer though…..
Danaa,
Been up for over 24 hours. Brain dead. Have enough cells functioning to drink coffee. Got to get to bed. Physicist?
You get a gold star. But please get some sleep and forget about the bond market. It’s a bit of a red herring in this connection, I think, but an interesting one. especially the idea of a see-saw effect with the stock market. Enough to make one sea-sick.
Back to speculations next time.
the democratic left loves to bash Bush/Cheney.
I think GWB eventually figured out how he was being used and warned Obama of the traps that awaited him, when Bush mouthed the name ‘Neville Chamberlain’ in the Knesset.
I think Bush was warning Obama that he — that any and every recent US president — would end up being an appeaser of the militarized and expansion-minded, aggressive Israeli state and its American apparatus.
I think you give Bush waaaay too much credit. I think Bush enjoyed having all of the prestige of being President, without any of the effort of actually crafting policy and leading the country himself.
Bush made a fascinating comment some time after Obama won the election. Something to the effect that it would be good for the public to see a fresh face explaining things to them. He seemed to be conceding that POTUS is a spokeman for public policy, not a maker of it.
On Afghanistan, Obama is keeping promises. He promised during his campaign never to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban, to focus on Afghanistan militarily, thereby somehow correcting the Bush error of distraction.
Iraq is the place that he lied. (There he promised to be out in 18 months. There are now more troups in Iraq than when he was elected.)
He has to dance around two dangerous goblins that he didn’t bargain for (and that Phil and the posse here don’t address, for the comfort an ideological “brand”).
One is politics, with the many domestic and foreign voices that speak truths and make politically threatening demands (pretending that they know enough to).
The second is the world itself. Its an open question whether the US needs to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to chase a small group of murderers around the globe, rather than spend that same amount on energy conservation and reduce oil consumption by 1/3.
The idea that the US should not intervene in the oil and thereby Muslim world is fantasy. You ignore our continuing energy dependance, and propose to do NOTHING about it, in fact dismiss it as of any ge0-political importance.
On Israel for example, there is no simple way to force Israel, to force the PA, to force Hamas, to adopt the US interests. They have their own, by their own perception, which they will not easily abandon. ALL of those groups respond to direct and intentionally humiliating force very negatively.
I HOPE that Phil is trying to do more than react, that he is trying to affect. And, I hope that he is trying to affect for the good, meaning reduction of suppression and reduction of bloodshed.
I HOPE that Phil has not adopted the neo-conservative and “realist” emphasis on American interests as over moral interests in the math of personal and political advocacy.
I agree with professor Walt that it is in the US interest to promote peace in the world and particularly in the middle east, and that it is also in Israel’s interest.
He ran for fucking President of the United States and he didn’t bargain for… what, exactly? What, did the fact that we’re involved in TWO WARS and an ECONOMIC CRISIS show up in a gift-wrapped package on the White House door step after inauguration? Seriously? Did he think his name was going in a lottery of countries he’d end up as President as and he was hoping it would be Norway, or something? Can you maybe write a post based on reality once in a while?
Meanwhile, for the sake of mutual enjoyment (and my blood pressure):
“♫ You better wiiise up, Philip Weiiiss! ♫”
Witty: Re: “On Afghanistan, Obama is keeping promises. He promised during his campaign never to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban, to focus on Afghanistan militarily, thereby somehow correcting the Bush error of distraction.”
The Taliban is solely concerned with the local region; Obama even recognized that
they are not the focus of core US interest concerns. Don’t impliedly conflate the Taliban with Al Quaida (less than 100 operatives, and soon we will have 100,000 farm boys on the ground to attack them. If you are worried about women’s rights, say so; and ask yourself, what about all those other countries we support with crappy women’s rights histories? Is this where we should spending our national security money?)
“Iraq is the place that he lied. (There he promised to be out in 18 months. There are now more troups in Iraq than when he was elected.)”
Yes, and when will you admit that he sold the masses according to neocon prescription–those two dozen or so stink tank ideological advocates with PNAC
as their ideology?
“He has to dance around two dangerous goblins that he didn’t bargain for (and that Phil and the posse here don’t address, for the comfort an ideological “brand”).
One is politics, with the many domestic and foreign voices that speak truths and make politically threatening demands (pretending that they know enough to).
The second is the world itself. Its an open question whether the US needs to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to chase a small group of murderers around the globe, rather than spend that same amount on energy conservation and reduce oil consumption by 1/3.”
This chasing funds what old Ike referred to as the military-industrial complex. I won’t even get into the history showing that the Balfour declaration was A promising B what only C was entitled to promise. C was left out. Worse, at least A said whatever it promised to B it was not to be at the expense of C; but it was, an obviously.
“The idea that the US should not intervene in the oil and thereby Muslim world is fantasy. You ignore our continuing energy dependance, and propose to do NOTHING about it, in fact dismiss it as of any ge0-political importance.”
OPEC arose as a result of our saving Israel from being defeated by rescuing them
in the early 1970′s. The USA actually was willing to do a nuke war with USSR over Israel; at the last moment, the USSR was not ready to risk itself as the USA was–in the first , against Israel, in the latter, for Israel.
“On Israel for example, there is no simple way to force Israel, to force the PA, to force Hamas, to adopt the US interests. They have their own, by their own perception, which they will not easily abandon. ALL of those groups respond to direct and intentionally humiliating force very negatively.”
True, the difference is that Israel can count on the USA and European diaspora
to rubber-stamp Israel’s POV–the Arabs have yet to take advantage in any significant way of the USA plutocracy system of government. The disparity is really because of the long-term enmeshment of jews in Europe and the USA, while the Arab diaspora is new at this game.
“I HOPE that Phil is trying to do more than react, that he is trying to affect. And, I hope that he is trying to affect for the good, meaning reduction of suppression and reduction of bloodshed.”
Nice way of saying Phil is just irrationally reacting from the emotional hip; he’s a girly girl, while Dick Witty is the real strong clit.
“I HOPE that Phil has not adopted the neo-conservative and “realist” emphasis on American interests as over moral interests in the math of personal and political advocacy.”
The neo-conservative emphasis is contrary to the realist (not in quotes) emphasis on what’s good for the USA. The moral imperative belongs to those Palestinians
who still hold the keys to their original homes, though they’ve been prevented from
entering for over a half century.
“I agree with professor Walt that it is in the US interest to promote peace in the world and particularly in the middle east, and that it is also in Israel’s interest.”
So, did you write the White House and explain how the Israeli refusal to honor
Obama’s Cairo plea to stop all settlements ( if not reverse them) is the first step towards peace? Can’t wait to hear from you on that question.
The problems with this thought pattern, Witty, are:
1. the insulting assumption that Americans cannot be ingenious and creative to develop additional forms of energy unless there is some enemy goading them. In fact, Americans ARE developing wind farms in the Dakotas and fracturing shale to release enormous gas reservoirs in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Texas. The will, the creativity, and the entrepreneurship are all functioning, without the need for “monsters to destroy.”
2. Precisely what do Americans like Hillary and her cabal think nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia wish to do with their oil, drink it? Iran and SA and every other oil rich nation need to sell their oil for their own benefit, and the US, China, and Europe need to buy it for their own benefit. Isn’t it cheaper to participate in an honest market than to kill people and subvert states in order to impose outside control on those markets?
Well there’s a third problem too: Mr. “Oooh boycotts are too violent and you should be seeking a peaceful solution” Witty is actively endorsing direct American intervention in other sovereign countries — military intervention, ostensibly.
I’m so sick of him masquerading as a self-declared liberal and then spouting every neocon philosophy in the book. If he were any phonier, mondoweiss.net would have to invest in a graphics processor just so they could render him at real time, like our own blogtastic version of Jar Jar Binks.
I gotta tell ya guys, I mean I am really mystified at some of the maudlin speech about Obama, the reason he is not going to be different than Bush is that the same people are in power – and it has nothing to do with the White House or the other houses. You can remember this post when everything comes crashing down with “another emergency.” Sometime I wonder if people even want to learn anything, you keep milking this dry system. Guess you just cannot conceive of anything else, or you are so satisfied with your goodies that you are totally anesthetized.
THE OBAMA PUPPET
RE: “What can we do about it?”
MoveOn PETITION:
“Congress must push the Obama administration to outline firm benchmarks and a binding timeline to bring all of our troops home from Afghanistan as soon as possible.”
Sign the petition – link to pol.moveon.org
———————————————————————————
Just Foreign Policy: Urge Congress to Vote Now Against Afghanistan Troop Increase
Urge your Representative and Senators to support a debate and vote now on the President’s plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, using the following link – link to justforeignpolicy.org
RE: “What can we do about it?”
———————————————————————————
Robert Greenwald / Brave New Foundation: This War Must End
Sign the petition to tell Congress we cannot afford a war that does not make us safer. – link to action2.bravenewfilms.org
———————————————————————————
Friends Committee on National Legislation:
Afghanistan: Say No to More War
By adding your name to this statement, and encouraging others to sign it as well, you’ll help us put as many people as possible on record opposing the escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Please take the time to sign the petition and let your voice be heard. – link to action.fcnl.org